Into Thin Air (31 page)

Andy led Lee over to his sister. “She
does
know how to stay still,” Valerie said lamely. “It must just be a bad habit coming out. You know. Speed. Motorcycles. From her mother.” Bewildered, she looked at Roy.

“She's just getting used to us, that's all,” Roy said.

“Sure she is,” Valerie said.

Lee took Andy's hand and folded it between her own. Valerie seemed to see Lee for the first time. Brightening, she draped an arm about her, leading her toward the house. “It's amazing, isn't it?” Valerie said as if she were surprised. “One minute I don't have a daughter, the next minute I do. Next fall she'll even be in kindergarten.” She turned toward Roy. “Can you get her?”

They all settled into the living room. “Mom called,” Valerie said to Andy. “You know, I don't know what's wrong with her. She gets hysterical. She keeps calling me up with these articles about mass murderers. ‘It's in the genes,' she says. Do you believe this woman offered me money to hire a detective to find out about Karen's mother?”

Andy grinned. “Aren't you curious?” he said.

“The woman's dead,” Valerie said.

Karen sprang into the room, arms and legs like elastic. Her dress had a damp grassy stain spread across the front. Roy trailed behind her. “Look what Lee and Uncle Andy brought you,” Valerie said, lifting up the doll. “No,” said Karen, veering violently, crashing into Lee.

Instantly Lee recoiled. Karen surveyed her with stony eyes. “Baby, this is Lee,” Valerie said. Lee didn't move. Karen swayed on her sneakers, started for Lee, and then pivoted abruptly, storming from the room.

Valerie pushed out a breath. “Don't worry,” she told Lee. “It just takes her time to take to people.”

Lee slowly unfurled on the chair.

“I'll put her to bed, then we can have dinner. Potluck, I'm afraid,” Valerie said.

“It's hard to be a chef with a child,” Roy explained.

Karen slept through dinner. Every five minutes or so Valerie would disappear and come back, eyes bright. The next time she got up, though, Roy gripped her arm, lowering her back onto her seat. “This chicken's delicious,” he said.

Valerie kept yawning. By the time Roy served peach pie, she was propped up by her elbows, fighting sleep. “I'm sorry, I don't get much rest these days,” she said.

“We have to get going anyway,” Andy said.

“So soon?” Valerie said.

“Just let me wash my hands,” Lee said.

On her way back, she passed Karen's room. The door was open. A Donald Duck night-light shone through the shadows of the room. Cautiously Lee looked in. Karen was lying in the kind of ruffly canopy bed any child would adore. Her eyes suddenly flashed open, locking with Lee's. Karen didn't move, didn't break her gaze. Unnerved, Lee stepped back. For a moment she felt caught in place, like a specimen pinned against an examining board. Abruptly she jerked free, striding into the living room. As soon as he saw her, Andy smiled. “Now, I take
my
baby home,” he said.

The whole first week Karen spent with Valerie and Roy, she acted as if she didn't know them, as if she had been somehow kidnapped and placed into the wrong life. She seemed dazed. She kept planting herself on whatever spot Valerie led her to, or sometimes she would tear fiercely around the house, screaming, striking Valerie if she tried to stop her.

Valerie had done her best to be soothing, to be patient and understanding. “I know you're scared, but you're going to love it here,” she said. Karen stiffened under her touch. Her eyes seemed liquid pools of grief.

“What is it?” Valerie whispered. She crouched down to Karen's level. “Can't you tell me?” She gently tilted Karen's small chin so that Karen was looking at her.

“Does my mother know I'm here?” Karen said finally.

Valerie hesitated. She believed in telling children the truth, but on the other hand, she believed in comfort. She half wished she herself could believe in heaven, then maybe she could see all this as a trial that would merit her a just reward in the afterlife. Straightening, she stroked Karen. “Honey, I'm sure she does. I bet she's happy you found such a good home.”

Karen blinked. “Is it easy to get here?” she said.

Valerie frowned. “I guess it's easy enough,” she said. She smiled uncertainly. “Why, you expecting company?”

Karen jerked from her grip. Valerie tugged her back, a little roughly, but Karen pulled free again.

Valerie didn't understand it. She had thought Karen would be delighted to be in a real home, that she couldn't help but warm to two parents as loving as she and Roy, but Karen stayed remote. She ignored Valerie's offers of paints or crayons or brownie mix. She made her body a board if you so much as looked at her. But she could spend hours staring out the windows, nose to the glass, breathing clouds of mist onto Valerie's clean windows. She gazed outside until Valerie finally opened the front door. “You want to go out, scoot,” she said, irritated. Cautiously Karen peeled herself from the window. She followed Valerie out onto the front lawn, and then, almost immediately, she went to the edge of the lawn and stopped, staring at the street, straining right and left. “There's nothing
out
there,” Valerie said.

If Karen wasn't staring at the roads, she was at the phone, frantically dialing numbers. “You want me to call someone for you?” Valerie coaxed. Karen slumped and then burst into tears. Astonished, Valerie drew her to her. She stroked her rough hair; for a moment Valerie thought this might be the proverbial breakthrough. She was actually holding Karen and Karen was allowing it; Karen was holding her back, “Oh, doesn't this feel good,” Valerie said, but Karen suddenly tore from her, staring at Valerie as if she hated her. “What?” Valerie said, but Karen was gone.

The more she tried to calm her, the wilder Karen became. She screamed in tantrums; she ran around the house. At night she fought going to bed. When Valerie went to check on her, Karen was fully clothed, stunned, staring out the window.

When Karen finally slept, it was with the uneasy sleep of an adult. She twisted under the coverlet, flinging her pillow to the ground. She moaned and sweated and tumbled among the bedclothes. Sometimes, too, in the middle of the night, she screamed, frightening Valerie into a kind of dizzy paralysis. She lay planted and terrified against the bedclothes, waiting until Roy got up and went to the child. In Karen's woozy half-sleep, she never recognized him. She kicked and scratched at him. He had to hold her against the bed, gasping the loveliest lullabies he knew until gradually she grew interested in his effort. He let go, continuing to sing hoarsely until he saw her drowsing. When Valerie came into the room, he wouldn't meet her eyes.

Karen always woke at six, running to the front door, banging on it until Valerie and Roy woke up. They'd stumble toward Karen, who, alarmed, would race into the kitchen. “Don't play with the door.” Roy called after her. Valerie would try to make some semblance of breakfast. She'd try to talk with Roy, but usually she ended up mopping up the juice Karen had spilled deliberately, grabbing Karen's hands before she could topple her juice.
“Stop,”
she said, a little harder than she had intended. Karen drew back abruptly.

She spent most of her day feeling like the meanest person alive. She tried to be nice, to be understanding, and then Karen would scream or run, and before she could stop herself, she would have slapped her. When Roy called, she was tense. He wanted to make plans for that evening. “I'm beat,” she said. “How can I possibly go out?”

That evening when Roy came home, he brought her wildflowers in a pink paper cone. “Oh, how lovely,” she said.

“Where's Karen?” he said.

“I got her to go to sleep,” she said. He swayed her body against his. “You must be hungry,” she said.

“Yeah, I am,” he said, touching her hip, swaying her toward him. “Come on,” he said, dipping her to the floor. She was too tired to enjoy this. She sleepily catalogued twin scratches on his collarbone, a span of freckles along one shoulder. He slid his body against hers, he pulled at her buttons, and only when his hands were on her bare skin did she feel a prickling of desire. She lifted her face to his. “Roy.” she said, and then, at the moment she kissed him, Karen screamed.

“Shit,” Valerie said. “No, I'll go,” Roy said, staying her. She stumbled after him. Karen was standing in bed, crying. “You just had a dream,” Roy said, but Karen kicked at him, toppling herself into the bed. Roy lowered himself onto the bed and carefully stroked Karen's trembling back. “It's just a dream,” he said, and when Karen took his finger, he looked up at Valerie with relief.

They both stayed by Karen until she fell asleep, and by then they were exhausted, It took Valerie longer to get into bed than Roy, and when she lifted the covers, his eyes were shut. She rested her face against his.

“What does she have, radar?” he said, his eyes still shut. “What can she possibly have against us?”

“Come on,” Valerie said. “You just made real contact. It's more than I've done.” He rolled away from her.

“Maybe the Montana mom gave her tranquilizers,” Valerie said dully, into the steady new silence of the night.

It didn't last. The next evening, when Roy came home and tried to sweep Karen into a hug, she bit him. He kept trying, but only Valerie loved him for it. She tried, too. She tried one more week, and then another, and the only emotion she could summon up toward her daughter was a kind of draining despair, a feeling that somehow a mistake had been made and she was responsible for it.

An “institutional child” was the phrase that always came to Valerie's mind when she looked at her daughter. She scrubbed her and put her in a gingham dress, and still there was something rough about her, something that smacked of trailer parks and motorcycles. She took her to the playground, to measure her against other kids. She was sure they must be as rowdy as her own, and also that maybe what Karen needed, simply, was friends of her own age. She wasn't in the park for five minutes when Karen roughly pushed a little boy off a swing, tumbling him into the dirt. Stunned, he scuttled away from her. “Hey, hey!” a woman called. She was small and lean and dressed in a sleeveless flowered jumpsuit. She didn't look tired at all, Valerie noticed. The woman scooped up her son, brushing him off, and then marched up to Valerie and Karen. “We don't
hit
,” she said sternly to Karen, but she was looking at Valerie. “That's right,” Valerie said to Karen, who was stubbornly standing by the swing, chewing on her grimy fist. Valerie felt like a fool. She felt as if she were the one being chastised because she couldn't control Karen. She felt like blurting out that Karen was adopted.

She was crying when Roy came home that night. He rocked her against him. “We have to do something,” Roy said finally. “We have to get her checked out.”

“She's not a car.”

“Come on. A child psychologist.” Miserably he dug his hands into his pockets. “I mean, maybe it's us. Wouldn't you want to know that?” She gave him a grudging shrug. She thought queasily of the times she had hit Karen. Innocent times. She had never meant real harm. “I have some names,” he said at last.

“We're just going to meet a friend of Daddy's,” Valerie told Karen. She smoothed down Karen's red dress.

She and Roy had driven twenty miles to a small office in a shopping complex, a waiting room with four dog-eared copies of
Psychology Today and Highlights for Children
, two blue leather couches, and no other people at all.

“Well,” Valerie said doubtfully. She riffled through the
Highlights
. There was a puzzle, a maze inviting the reader to find the rabbit hidden somewhere on a page crowded with trains and trees and people. “Karen, look, want to find the rabbit?” she said, and when Karen glumly looked at her shoes, Valerie turned to Roy. “You want to find it?” she said helplessly.

“There,” he said, kissing her nose. “There's the rabbit.”

The door opened and a woman suddenly strode out, in a bright yellow dress with matching glasses, and as soon as she spotted Karen, she smiled. “Well, who have we here?” she said encouragingly. Karen stood up.

“I'm Doctor Wymon,” the woman said, thrusting out a hand to Roy, who shook it limply and then passed it on to his wife. “We'll just have ourselves a chat without the parents present,” she said. She looked down at Karen. “I have a puppy in my office. You want to see?”

She had led Karen into the waiting room, ushering her in to see the doctor by herself. And when Karen came out, barely half an hour later, sullen, dark, Valerie's heart sank. Karen sat with Roy while Valerie went in to talk to the doctor, who said her daughter was acting normally, considering the circumstances. “There's been some trauma. Having her mother die, Being in a home. But she's young and resilient. I wouldn't do anything until I saw how she handles kindergarten. With enough children around her, she'll learn to socialize. She'll start to accept that her mother's gone.” The doctor smiled. “These things take time,” she said. She leaned forward and handed Valerie a folded bill for two hundred dollars.

Life had to have spaces in it. Roy left every morning; some part of the weekend he went to the solace of his office. She resented his cheerful exits, the easy way he could extricate himself from Karen and sometimes from her as well. She missed the evenings of just lying in bed with him, talking, making love. She was exhausted and he was tense. The one time they managed to go out to dinner, Valerie had fallen asleep at the table, and he had been furious with her.

She tried to forge some sort of path for herself, some escape. She searched for a sitter, using the local high school girls, but none of them ever wanted to sit twice. She went to the restaurant when she could.